This article seems to say chilli peppers can't hurt you. However just a few days ago the Journal of Emergency Medicine reported that a ghost pepper (a very hot chilli pepper) caused an esophageal rupture - a serious and potentially life threatening injury.
Note that this is a very indirect way of harming someone: eating peppers has (likely) caused vomiting, violent vomiting has caused rupture of the esophagus.
This is similar to saying that walking can cause fat embolism (a life threatening condition): while walking you can fracture one of the long bones in your leg (e.g. your femur). A rare complication of long bone fracture is fat embolism.
One could argue that it wasn't necessarily the pepper itself that tore the hole in that individual's esophagus. Rather it was the intense, repeated vomiting that caused the rupture. The pepper only caused the hole by proxy.
But was this due to the heat, acidity or some other characteristic of this cross? Or was it because he swallowed a pepper whole and it tore a hole because it went down sideways? You have to remember how much and how fast people shove things into their mouths during these contests...
I can't find anything that tells me why it happened.
http://www.jem-journal.com/article/S0736-4679(16)30256-6/ful...
Why is the BBC not aware of this? A simple search would have yielded a more timely, accurate and interesting story. Somewhat disappointing.